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Is elections fever driving you to Google for campaign news? Like the millions of Indian voters who are searching up a storm about the Lok Sabha elections, or who are searching for their polling dates, we’re also curious to find out more about the coming polls. That’s why we’ve given our Google Elections hub a significant facelift: starting today, Indian voters who visit Google.co.in/elections will now see many new tools that will help get them informed, engaged, and inspired for voting day.

This revamped hub is the home of our Pledge to Vote campaign, a “Google score” tool for politicians, Search trends infographics, YouTube Election playlists (get even more videos at our YouTube Elections hub), and where you can tune into our Hangouts with politicians.

Pledge to Vote

These historic elections mark a crucial moment for India. It’s important that you exercise your right to vote, which is why we set up this first-ever Pledge to Vote map for India. Using the map-tool, you can share why you pledge to vote, while also viewing why your fellow citizens across the nation pledge to vote.

You can also watch this inspiring story of Mr. Shyam Negi, independent India’s first voter, who is 97 years old and has never missed the opportunity to vote.

Google Score and Infographics

For the first time, Google’s engineers have created a “Google Score” tool, which reflects the amount of search activity for a person in the previous 24 hours using Google Search and YouTube, combined with the amount of engagement with a person's name on Google+. Everyday we will display five politicians with the highest Google Scores from the previous day.  The site also has infographics based on Google Trends, such as top-searched Chief Ministers, regional parties, and more.  

Hangouts Series

Google is working with a host of partners to enable a direct dialogue between citizens and leaders by means of Google+ Hangouts, which allows up to nine participants to interact on a video chat, which is also broadcast live on YouTube. The first politician who joined us on Hangout was BJP leader Arun Jaitley on 25th March. You can review the calendar of guests in this series at our Elections Portal. If you can’t get on YouTube to tune in, you can give a missed call to 088-00-484848 to listen in on the Hangout (both live and after it's over). In the past, leaders like Narendra Modi and Mr. P Chidambaram have successfully used this platform to engage with citizens on various topics, so we hope that users will continue to find this platform helpful as a means of connecting with their representatives.

As you gear up for voting day, remember that your one-stop shop for Elections 2014 is at Google.co.in/elections. Bookmark the page and check back often as campaign season in India heats up.

Posted by Sandeep Menon, Director Marketing, Google India

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Yes that's right! This one is for women looking to return to their corporate careers after a break. Five women in India are now a part of Google’s gCareer program, a six month internship for women professionals returning to the workforce.

gCareer India was launched to attract women professionals with diverse backgrounds and experiences, who have been out of the workforce for one year or more, are interested in the digital advertising space and willing to step into the dynamic environment of our advertising teams.

Getting back to work after a break can be a frustrating process. Lack of opportunities, finding roles that will do justice to the applicants’ aspirations and career goals and also offer great work life balance can be pretty daunting obstacles for many. With challenges such as these, many women just give up the thought of getting back to work

In less than three months of launch in India, the program has already onboarded five experienced women professionals who took a break from their careers for personal reasons. Our gCareer interns have education backgrounds as diverse as pure sciences, management, economics, sociology, etc. and bring to the table experiences from a variety of industries and organizations, viz. advertising (traditional, digital and outdoor), direct sales, consulting and audit and product management.

With gCareer we want to encourage and enable women to get back to work as a break in a career should definitely not mean the end of it. On this International Women’s Day, we want to celebrate and congratulate the second innings of these five new Googlers.

Posted by Sharad Goyal, Head of People Operations, Google India

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[Cross posted from the Official Google Asiapacific Blog]

This International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating the power of a woman’s voice with greetings from inspiring women and girls in our homepage doodle. Click on the image below to listen to messages from Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani education and women’s-rights activist, Anne Geddes, the Australian photographer and women’s advocate, and Mary Kom, the Indian five-time World Boxing champion.

Across Asia-Pacific, we’ve embarked on programs and partnerships to help empower women from all walks of life. We want to help more women transform their lives — and the lives of others — through the Internet, and to nurture the next generation of women techmakers to tackle challenges that only technology can help solve.

Supporting women in tech

This year we are launching a series of global Women Techmakers events to give technical women greater visibility, a wider community and more resources. We hope you’ll join us at one of more than 30 events taking place from Pakistan to Papua New Guinea to celebrate and support passionate female techmakers.

Find out where Women Techmakers events are happening across the region

Getting girls into tech

Through programs such as the RISE Awards and Anita Borg Scholarship, we’re changing the way girls think about careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and encouraging them to pursue studies in these fields. We’re also getting them excited about coding through Raspberry Pi at an early age.

Connecting women and helping them get the most out of it

Initiatives such as Helping Women Get Online in India are introducing millions of women to the power of the web, through safe access points and education about basic Internet use. In Pakistan and Malaysia, Women on the Web is helping female entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses through technology.

This is just the start of our efforts to get more women in Asia involved in using, shaping and creating technology. By increasing women’s participation in tech, we think we can improve outcomes for all. We look forward to sharing more as we continue on this journey.

Posted by Xinmei Cai, Women@ Google APAC Tech Lead

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The NPTEL project, which comprises of seven IITs and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), has launched an online course in Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms. This is a free course and is open to all college students in any engineering or science steam in India. The online course is powered by Google's open-source MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) platform called Course Builder and it runs on App Engine and Compute Engine.

This is a golden opportunity for students to learn from some of the best Computer Science faculty in the country. Registration for the course is open until 10-March-2014. The first set of lectures and assignments have been released on 3-March.

We invite students to register on the course website.

See this introductory video from various organizations involved in this course.

After the course, an in-person, proctored exam can be taken by paying a nominal fee. Those who pass the exam will get a certificate.

We are honored to be a part of this initiative which aims to make high quality education accessible to a large number of students in India. NPTEL has been recording and uploading lecture videos since last several years. Their YouTube channel has more than 13,000 videos and has crossed 100 million video views.

Posted by Ashwani Sharma, University Relations Manager

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Many malls in India are evolving from standard shopping destinations to fully equipped entertainment hubs packed with shops, restaurants, theaters and even gaming zones. Next time you’re trying to meet a friend for coffee or find the movie theaters in an unfamiliar shopping mall, Google Maps can lend a little help.

Starting today, you can access Indoor Google Maps for 75  popular indoor venues across 22 cities in India. Indoor Google Maps are like having an indoor directory in the palm of your hand — helping you more easily work out how to get to where you want to go, without having to find a freestanding directory or mall assistant first. Popular venues like Ambience Mall in Gurgaon and Select City Walk in Delhi now have their floor plans uploaded to Google Maps. The maps automatically appear when you zoom in on a location, and then fade away when the map is zoomed out.

Ambience Mall in Gurgaon

In some locations, to make people’s indoor navigation easier and more seamless, we have adapted the location technology developed for My Location — previously only available outdoors — so that it now works indoor as well. This means that when you move up or down a level in a building with multiple floors, the map will automatically update to display which floor you’re on. Where available, you can access indoor walking directions to help you get to where you need to go more quickly.

Select City Walk Mall in Delhi

This is the first stage of our Indoor Google Maps offering in India, and we hope the new feature can help you more easily explore these popular malls across the country. If you’re an Indian business owner interested in getting your location’s floor plan included in Google Maps, please visit maps.google.com/floorplans.

Posted by Suren Ruhela, Director and Product Manager, India Google Maps